The Cabin, and: Impression, Sunrise, and: Wedding Night

Abstract

The Cabin, and: Impression, Sunrise, and: Wedding Night Allison Donohue (bio) The Cabin Everyone knows the shape of a ghost. There,after turning a corner, the way the hallwayfalls away and she stands like a ray or a beamof Spring, shining. That ghosts are far fromfrightening. But more like gazing through a windowat the splintered cold. I saw onejust the other day across the lawn. She led me,with the curtsy of her hips, the gentle waterfallof her waist, back to that Spring,arriving there with him. Where every morning he and I came alive in speckled light and movedlike slow, spring water through the rocks towardsomething like an ocean or a river. And after,in the musty screened-in porch, we readentangled in our heavy thoughts. Then theghost became me as I watched him in thekitchen between the steam, in the evening,cooking sausages over polenta cakes, spinachwith thin slices of jamón. He poured me wineand handed me his fork. How can they sayghosts are mere fabrications when I can feel him stillholding my arms, the thin girl I'd been when,after leaving the cabin, he kissed me on my parents' lawn? [End Page 136] Impression, Sunrise after the painting by Claude Monet A glum, thunderous summer wakes,overcast and hanging. She dreams againof the white-walled room waiting for itstapestry of paint. Of hours spent with him.August shivers through the window;the smell of salt-blocked fish, thesound of frigates lowing out to sea,their horns, like hearts, moaning. Then quietas a paintbrush she considers the unlocked, propped suitcasein her room of nothing more than a bed, a chair,a wisp of frayed curtain circling the hotair. Down the hall, lace silhouettes falllike dune birds on prey, their beaks andwings pointed. The sun, sad andtroublesome,hovers up. And that is all thereis to love. The sea tuckedbeneatha coat of wind, the sand bristling like thespiked shoulders of a Dungeness crab. Shecupsa dish of fog and begins to drawthe conch quiet, the sea raw; the achethe frigates drag in their slow, impossible wake.She withdraws to dip her brush into the shadow,to place the couple rowing forwardon the edge of their rocking reflection. Theyfish the sun up out of the ocean, so roundwith summer it warms her canvasand her thin strokes in the sunrise-dim dream,the couple not so separate as they seemed to him. [End Page 137] Wedding Night You told me, that night, you like imagining as you sleepthat your whole body lies like a long, stretched constellationin the belly of a lake. There was a smallceiling of clouds beginning to pillow and deepen with sound,rumbling like the music of fastmachinesacross high, arched bridges (dependingon the wind, the weather). I told you: as a girl, when I couldn't sleep, I used to walk a long, deserted beach listeningto the dramatic sea. Being alone—and beyond my control—the sea wouldsing, and sing, mourning the lossand gain of land. I would bend to hold her in my cupped hands. And now, sometimes when I'm sleepless (but never, now, alone) I watch your long, lean bodybeneath the song of a smallcontinuing. Your oared arms resting heavy, heavy; your slim backcurved like the edge of an empty, rockinghull. It is late, dark. And full ofdreams you breathe, delicately rowingtoward deep, untold imaginings. [End Page 138] Allison Donohue Allison Donohue holds degrees from Virginia Tech, Texas Tech University, and the University of Oregon. Her poems have appeared in Ninth Letter, Crab Orchard Review, Hotel Amerika, and elsewhere. Copyright © 2018 University of Nebraska Press